some broad on fb posted this about him the other day. sounds like roky was approachable anyways....
"Roky Erickson almost killed my ex boyfriend when my ex was a little boy being raised by Cosmic Cowboys in Austin in the 60s and 70s. Not just once, but at least twice. My ex is a lot older than me and in the 60s and 70s he was a little boy and his parents hung out with the same crowd as Roky. Roky almost drowned my ex in a pool by “playing “ with him, which just amounted to him repeatedly dunking the child until he almost didn’t come up again. The only thing that really saved my ex was the fact that his mother FINALLY showed up again and saw what Roky was doing and she lept into the pool and scooped my ex up and put him on the ground on the side of the pool and she proceeded to start beating the fuck out of Roky. She was notoriously scrappy and my ex was almost dead, drowned to death, no joke.
Roky was never really quite right after tripping too hard and going to the psych ward when he got busted. Everyone knew that. He wasn’t quite right even before that, from the beginning. But I digress.
Another time he almost killed my ex when my ex was a kid was when the same big group of Austinite hippies and their little raggamuffin neglected kids were all hanging out in one of those big beautiful Texas ranch houses that the hippies loved to overtake and turn into communes and shit. So Roky and the ex as a six or seven year old or something end up alone together in this big room in this big ranch house. One of those huge beautiful dens those things all had, with fireplaces and huge exposed beams. There was a big beam going across the ceiling above their heads about ten feet up and Roky said to the BabyEx “I bet you can’t grab that beam if I lifted you up there.” Like a dare. So my ex , of course, said “ YEAH HUH COULD TOO !!” So Roky lifted him on up there. And as soon as he grabbed hold of the beam and Roky asked him if he had it and the ex said yes, Roky LET GO OF HIM AND WALKED AWAY LEAVING HIM DANGLING THERE TEN FEET OFF THE GROUND !! He looked at the little boy struggling to keep hold, screaming bloody murder and crying....and he walked out of the room and out of the house. My ex somehow managed to hold on...barely... for about ten or fifteen minutes until some fucked up hippie boomer parent or something came in , finally, after hearing the kid screaming for fifteen minutes, and rescued him. But if he had fallen, and it’s a miracle he didn’t, he could have easily broken his neck or his skull and died.
And that was Roky Erickson for you.
RIP Nutcase."